Rachael D. Reavis Bio

Rachael D. Reavis joined the Earlham College community in 2010 as a Visiting Assistant Professor. She was hired as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in 2016, and promoted to Associate Professor in 2018. She earned a Bachelors Degree from Connecticut College, with a double major in Psychology and Religion. She earned a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology and a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

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Dr. Reavis is interested in children's friendships and experiences of peer victimization. However, she also enjoys providing research assistants the opportunity to explore other areas of research, and thus her lab has investigated a wide range of topics.

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Dr. Reavis is committed to open learning, both in teaching and research. In the classroom, Dr. Reavis is working toward offering classes with zero-cost materials, by using open resource textbooks, library e-books, and open resource programs such as R.

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All members of her lab are trained in issues of reproducibility and replicability, learning about HARKing and p-hacking and how to avoid those research practices. Starting in 2019, all future Peer Lab studies will be pre-registered, with materials, data, and analyses freely available.

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She is also committed to creating an inclusive work environment, which includes advocating for family friendly policies and hiring practices that promote diversity. Dr. Reavis' report on family leave led to Earlham College offering paid semester leaves to new parents. Her approach to attracting a diverse applicant pool is now a model for hiring practice at Earlham College. She also helped develop a mentoring program for new psychology/neuroscience faculty.

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